


this scar is a

by loyaulte_me_lie



Category: Heathers: The Musical - Murphy & O'Keefe
Genre: Fluff, Future Fic, Gen, Healing, Reflection, kind of?, polaroids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-30 01:29:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16755256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loyaulte_me_lie/pseuds/loyaulte_me_lie
Summary: Veronica is sorting through her mother's stuff with her daughter. They find an old polaroid from 1989, and have a conversation, of sorts.





	this scar is a

_"It's nothing but time and a face that you lose_  
_I chose to feel it and you couldn't choose_  
_I'll write you a postcard_  
_I'll send you the news_  
_From the house down the road from real love..."_

*

_March 2018_

*

They’re sorting through the photos together, sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded by a whole pile of stuff from her parents’ place. It’s been sitting in its box in the corner for weeks, and she keeps walking past it, glancing at it every now and again, knowing she needs to get it open and get it done, but not wanting to actually do it. Mom had thrown out most of the stuff in the last year of her life, but this had been all the awful, random detritus shoved into corners that they’d needed to get rid of to sell the house. It glares at her, and she avoids it, and Michael is so good about not getting mad, even though he nearly tripped over the damn thing last week. At least the cat enjoys sleeping on it, a ball of fluff all pressed against the radiator.

Olivia came down the stairs in her stripy pyjamas earlier, her hair all huge and fluffy, yawning and cramming her glasses back onto her nose. She’d come home from college for the weekend, conspired with Michael and turned up in the kitchen last night, rain-damp and beaming, her rucksack slung onto a chair, giving Veronica a kiss and immediately going for the cat, who’d let himself be hugged for a world record of ten seconds before wriggling for freedom. Veronica smiles now, just thinking about it, as she shuffles through receipts, throws the lot in the trash. Olivia clutches her coffee mug, leans over Veronica’s shoulder.

“No way, that’s you when you were little?”

“Yeah,” Veronica holds up the photograph.

“You were even _blonder_ than you are now!” Olivia laughs, “Look how cute and happy you look!”

“I think I’d just discovered the joys of snails,” Veronica smiles, putting the baby photo aside and picking up a stack of report cards. Then, suddenly, there it is. It glints up at her, slightly ominous; She stares at it for a second, winded, and then before she can even do anything, think anything, Olivia’s scooped it up.

“Who’s _this,_ Mom? He’s _cute_ …for a white boy. Was he your boyfriend? He doesn’t look anything like Dad!”

“Ha,” Veronica says, weakly. He wasn’t cute, she thinks, gorgeous is more fitting. Gorgeous and utterly deadly, just the way nature always likes to make them.

“Are you okay? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, I’m just being nosy.”

“No, no, it’s okay. Memories. It was a long time ago. I was with him for a while in 1989, 1990, when I was seventeen.”

“Seventeen! He doesn’t look seventeen. What was his name?”

“JD. Jason Dean. But he went by JD.”

“JD,” Olivia turns the name over in her mouth. “Why did you break up?”

Veronica closes her eyes, thinks of the explosion, the gunpowder, the look in his eyes as they’d stood, waiting for the bomb to go off, her standing a safe distance away. Her heart had been thudding, the sweat had been slick in her palms, the anticipation of it, the waiting, the knowledge that he’d be dead, never able to bother her again, never able to use her the way he had…never able to smile at her across the cafeteria, to sneak in her window and stay up all night talking about books, to hang out in the quad, smoking, when they needed a break from Heather Duke and all the shit she’d had so much fun stirring. But that boy, that wonderful, gorgeous, funny, smart boy – that had only ever been a projection, a mask. She knows that now. He was a fantasy, a sunlit illusion, something that would never exist. The real JD…well, she’s still sad, for what they could have been, even all these years later, for how his shitshow of a life turned out, but…she doesn’t miss him. She doesn’t miss the walking on edge, the wonder of when he was going to snap, the constant pleading to be _normal, JD, can’t we just be normal, for once, I don’t want to do this anymore._ She doesn’t miss the way he’d look her in the eyes, hesitant, adoring, and say _I worship you, Veronica,_ and her knees had nearly given out under it all, she doesn’t miss it because she knows _worship_ isn’t the same as _love,_ worship puts someone up on a pedestal, worship is a blinding word, blazing, not something for the eyes of ordinary girls like her. Worship covers up all manner of sins.

It’s like gilt and gold. Worship and love. Veronica knows which one she’d rather have, now. Olivia is looking at her, half-guilty, half-curious. Veronica exhales, the lie ready on the tip of her tongue. “He died, in the March of 1990. The 5th. We had a pep rally, there was a gas explosion. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Oh _Mom,_ ” Olivia says, horrified. “I’m so _sorry._ ”

“Darling,” Veronica says, putting one of her hands over Olivia’s. “It was twenty-eight years ago. I saw a therapist. And it’s a horrible thing to say, but he’s probably happier dead than he ever was alive.”

Olivia’s eyes are swimming with tears, and Veronica finds a smile for her, for the beautiful, sensitive, kind daughter she and Michael have managed to raise for themselves. “It’s alright. Seriously. I’m alright.”

“I know, I’m just, yeah. Thinking about Samantha dying, or something. And yeah, I know. Stupid thought. Did you love him?”

“I thought I did, for a while. It was hard, for quite a while after, even into college. But then I met your Dad, and well, life moves on. It always does. The scars are still there, but they’re old, they become part of you and you forget about them, a little bit.”

“Yeah.” Olivia sniffles, then wipes at her eyes, puts down the Polaroid. JD’s handwriting is still on the thick white edge: _“23/11/89 – nothing beats Baudelaire._ ” He’s smiling, actually smiling, real and open and honest, and teen Veronica is looking at him instead of the camera, her expression all soft and hazy around the edges. “Are you going to keep it?”

Veronica considers, for a moment, the photo. The shaking feeling of standing over two dead bodies, of his ecstatic expression, his fingers locked around hers, reassuring her that it would be alright, that this was all part of the plan, that they were doing the right thing. The explosion, low in her gut. The way things might have turned out, the conscience she might not be dragging like a ball and chain round the law courts, fighting people’s corners, changing lives, Michael not sitting down beside her on the steps, offering her a lighter and telling her that if she ever needed someone to talk to, he was there, his dark eyes serious and kind. Olivia, not sitting here in her dressing gown, the cat announcing his presence with a chirrup. Without JD she’d never have this life, this life she loves. She’d have a clean conscience too, but the past is the past, and without this…well, who’s going to remember him?

“Maybe,” she says, and somehow, that seems like the right answer.

*

_"I'm not sorry I met you_

_I'm not sorry it's over_

_I'm not sorry there's nothing to save_

_I'm not sorry there's nothing to say"_

**Author's Note:**

> Another: "loyaulte is trying to deal with her feelings about Heathers" fic. Got a mammoth one from JD's perspective in the works, and really trying to do it justice, emphasis on the not-okayness of their relationship, but yeah. I might draw this scene too, who knows. Anyway. Weirdly specific headcanon is that Veronica meets Michael at law school, and he's like, the opposite of JD, and they're just very happy together, and Olivia was kind of an accident, but they rolled with it. What headcanons do any of you guys have post-ending?
> 
> Also the song "Your Ex Lover is Dead" by Stars which provided the quotes - is gorgeous. Definitely give it a listen if you want.


End file.
